“I shot the Alpha and would have been happy for him to bleed out,” the Alpha says, the expression on his face daring me to suggest he shouldn’t, but then his irritation turns to frustration as he watches her. “Quinn, though, burst into action. The result is that your very expensive silk Persian rug has been ruined by the Alpha we have rolled up in it.”
“What do you mean, she burst into action?”
He snickers, clearly enjoying the way I don’t have a full handle of the situation, mocking my confusion.
“Santiago!” she says, cutting off whatever he was going to say. “I doubt very much if Sergey’s second-in-command wants to hear about anything like that. I am nothing more than the woman who is marrying his Bratva.” She overaccentuates, leaving insinuation hanging in the air as obviously as her vanilla scent coats my tongue.
She treats me like a spoiled princess would. And he lets her. The other man jumps into the conversation in a very Beta-like manner. He steps in to divert my attention from her and to defuse the rising tension.
“I applied basic first aid. Quinn made the right call, keeping the attacker alive so you could question him. I assume that, as second-in-command, you would do that. If not, I will deliver him to whoever you say should be the one. Unless, of course, you don’t do that here. We honestly handled the situation how Victor would handle it back home. We meant no disrespect.”
Chapter Twenty
SANTIAGO
Every now and then, he looks at her, which is to be expected—she is one of the most gorgeous and charming women I’ve ever come across. But what worries me is how, when he does, his response flickers from one extreme to the other. It’s a seesaw of inconsistency that goes from him being seemingly offended by her very existence, to him eyeing her like she’s a ripe forbidden fruit he wants to feast on.
That is concerning, but what also worries me is how aware he is of his own conflict. When he catches himself doing it, his scent blows out, and his influence spikes until it all but disappears under a cloak of control. And it’s in the aftermath that he lashes out at her, cursing in a run of harsh, unintelligible words.
Kade has immediately caught on to the instability of the Russian. The volatile nature of the Alpha made Kade position himself, none too subtly, between him and Quinn. Kade even went so far as unbuttoning his suit jacket for easy access to hisholstered gun. His threat hangs in the air like her aromatic scent. She’s like a vanilla wonderland.
If Quinn is aware of the posturing going on, and it’s all but impossible to pretend the Russian isn’t being unstable as all fuck, she’s ignoring it and continues to answer his inane and endless run of questions.
She’s articulate in her explanation and has been since the first time he asked, not getting emotional or caught up in explaining herself perfectly, but he keeps asking the same question repeatedly in different ways. I’m not sure if he’s waiting for her to trip herself up, or if he’s looking for a different answer.
“Please”—she turns herself into his path as he walks around the spot where Kade killed one of the men—“I need a moment.”
I stay on the edge of the room, waiting to see what she needs a break from, and then my stomach bottoms out as she turns without waiting for his approval and marches straight at me.
“You, get here now,” she hisses as she passes, walking until we’re so far away from the Russian and the cop that the air is clear of their mingling scents so all I breathe is her.
Without waiting, she is in my face. “Just stop.” Her finger jabs towards me like a poisonous dart, completely disarming because if anyone else had ever even thought of disrespecting me like that, I would have ripped their fingers clean off. With her, though, the poison she aimed at me has me locked up like a statue, waiting with bated breath to hear what I’ve done.
Her mouth is taut with tension. “If you can’t pull this off, you need to pretend to call Victor and ask to be replaced. Have you not heard the saying, ‘Choose your battles wisely’?”
Okay, that, I wasn’t expecting. But at her insistence, I pull my head out of my ass and see what I’ve been missing because I’ve been so caught up in him. I think back to our interactions and feel like a fool. My mind is full of snapshots, each showing me, without question, she can and is reading the Alpha’semotions as well as she is mine. A pool of something that feels like repentance bubbles in my blood—until light catches the engagement ring, stealing my focus. I’m drawn back to the last time I was alone with her, which are far nicer images than anything to do with him.
Snatching her hand as it hovers in the air, I move like the wind, gentle but forceful, backing her until she is pinned against the wall. The thrum of her heartbeat picks up each time I rub my thumb over the pulse point on her wrist.
Moving her hand so the light refracts off the endless facets of the oversized diamond, I pull her hand up to my nose and take a long, steady, dragging sniff. “My scent is fading from this ugly fucking ring. When you take a shower, leave it on your bedside table, and I will have it back to you by the time you are done, saturated again by my come.”
I finally look past her hand, to her pretty blue eyes. Along the way, I nearly get deterred by the endless freckles dancing over her pale skin, until my attention is diverted to the way she’s biting her lip.
She’s fighting a smile. But she can’t hide the heat in her scent from me, until she somehow does. “Honestly, Santiago, if you can’t do this, admit defeat, tap out, and get someone else here. Because if you think he’s a handful, you’ve got no hope against Bambi.”
“Who. The. Fuck?” I hiss, falling into her a bit. Checking that the corridors are clear and the alcove we’re hiding from is free from any cameras, I use my hips to hold her in place, leaning down to whisper in her ear. “Say again?”
She wiggles under me, but it’s not by way of a fight to free herself; it’s a roll of her hips as she succumbs for a blip in time to her being an Omega, and me being an Alpha, and us having a very brief history of incredible orgasms.
“Jesus, I need to get laid,” she admits. Her words are not loud enough for anyone but me to hear.
“Surely, you have…”
Quinn stops me speaking with a press of her fingers against my mouth. Then I show her what a bad decision she made when I suck on her fingers as inappropriately as possible.
Her blue eyes darken to a dangerous color, sparkling in her desire. And then she does it again, making all the bonds we share, the desire we want to explore, disappear. With a shake of her head, she pretends I’m not doing exactly what I did to her pearly clit too many times over the course of the precious day we shared.
“This tells me you’ve made your decision, Santiago. I have to say, I thought it would be Kade who wouldn’t be able to handle shifting from lovers to working with each other. I get it, though. I feel an insatiable pull towards you, but I’m choosing differently. Make sure you heard that with your big Alpha brain—I’m choosing differently. I’m choosing me.” Her breathing shudders, and she blows a massive plume of her scent into my face before going on. “I need to go back to him and deal with the mess in the kitchen before Sergey and his harem get back.”
